Motion of Islands of Elastic Thin Films in the Dewetting Regime

Abstract

This paper addresses a two-dimensional sharp interface variational model for solid-state dewetting of thin films with surface energies, introduced by Wang, Jiang, Bao, and Srolovitz in \cite{jiang2016solid}. Using the $H^{-1}$-gradient flow structure of the evolution law, short-time existence for a surface diffusion evolution equation with curvature regularization is established in the context of epitaxially strained two-dimensional films. The main novelty, as compared to the study of the wetting regime, is the presence of moving contact lines.